


Chiromancy

by Petra



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Other, Phone Calls & Telephones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-18
Updated: 2008-05-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 20:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8911195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: Oracle's derisive snort is just as ugly a sound as Matches' vowels.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teland/gifts).



"Yes?" The voice distorter flattens Barbara's voice into Oracle's as reliably as ever.

It doesn't flatten her vowels into the glass-shattering equivalent of the, "Hey, baby doll," she gets over the line. It's a thought for the future, though, if she ever wants to get the JLA to ignore her calls.

"Malone," she says, and checks the security of the line. The last extant payphone south of Timm. "What do you need?"

His laugh is as distorted as hers would be if she found this situation terribly amusing. "Just wanted to chat, sweet thing." The colors of his jacket, not sufficiently muted in the streetlights, show up on her screen from a regrettably oblique angle. There aren't enough cameras in the area to give her a clue as to what's going on. "Whatcha wearing?" doesn't help either.

"Fuck-all," she says, and he chuckles, more loudly than any other way Bruce laughs.

"You want I should come over, then?" He turns so she can see his hand brushing his fly, giving the hand signal for 'all clear.'

Oracle's derisive snort is just as ugly a sound as Matches' vowels. "Not even if you're bringing me diamonds. What the hell are you tying up my line for?"

"I don't got any diamonds for you." He's palming himself.

Barbara pinches the bridge of her nose. "What have you got, then?"

"Come on, gorgeous, like you don't know." He puts another quarter into the payphone. "You must be playing around on me if you're so calm tonight."

"If you're putting out a call for bored housewives, you got the wrong number." Barbara adds more static to her end of the line. "It's a quiet night around here -- just me and the girls having a chat." Dinah's asleep in Thailand, and Helena is on a date, but that's none of Bruce's business.

"You and the girls, and you're not wearing nothing?" That gets her a grin right at the camera. "I'll be there in twenty, gorgeous. Don't get dressed."

He hangs up before she can tell him he's not invited via the telephone, but she tracks him to the nearest cache and pages him as soon as he's got his comm in. "O to B, respond."

His vowels are back to normal when he says, "Yes, Oracle?"

Barbara checks the tracers -- he's ten minutes out at least -- and reduces the voice distortion enough so that her aggravation will come across. "What's up?"

"Maintaining contacts with allies," he says, like he calls her up that way every night.

"In plaid?"

"Some of my associates seem to feel that it's de rigueur."

As if that answers the question. Barbara lets him wait a few seconds before she says, "I'm not interested in losing retinal function to your sartorial experimentation."

The soft sound of breath is as close to a laugh as she'll get from him; he only uses Batman's laugh to intimidate, and there's no way that'll work on her. "Considering your youthful fondness for yellow --"

Barbara sends a disconnect-click over the frequency without changing comm channels. When Bruce is in midair, heading northward, she says, "You can come over if you've got the time."

He's silent until he lands again, and even then, he pauses. "Do you need assistance?"

"Only to maintain contacts with my allies."

There's no camera on the apartment building where her tracers say he is, and too much smog tonight for the satellites to be of any use.

She can hear him smiling clearly enough that it doesn't matter.

"If it's a quiet night," he says, and takes off again, still headed north.


End file.
